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Published: December 15th 2010
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Thursday 28th October 2010 Woken up by the doorbell at 7am, we both looked at each other in horror and jumped out of bed. Thankfully we were organised for once and had packed the previous night. Joanne ran downstairs and pleaded for ‘dos minutos’ in her best Spanish and luckily the driver waited! Paulina, bless her, wrapped up some goodies in a doggy bag for breakfast and saw us on our way. We were shuttled to a large coach so we didn’t feel bad about making everyone wait as they were still shuttling others. It took 5 hours to get to El Calefate, stopping briefly at the boarder which was tarmac on the Chilean side and dirt track on the Argentinean – It seems they don’t want to advertise that another country is close, or at least don’t want it to look inviting!
At El Calefate almost everyone got off our coach, bar 6 who were doing the tour. We borrowed some Argentinean Pesos from our guide to enter Los Glaciers National Park and reached the first view point of the Perito Moreno glacier an hour later, stopping for photos. We borrowed some more money from our guide bank
and took a boat tour (just catching the last one of the day) which spent an hour slowly sailing around in front of the terminal face. Probably about 50 meters away at the closest point, the Glacier – one of nature’s great formations reaching 60m tall in places and 4km wide – towered above us, and several sections looked very precarious... we secretly hoped a massive section would fall, as it was evident several had by the massive icebergs littered around us.
It was very impressive to hear it creaking and cracking like thunder as it advances forward up to 2m a day. When the boat trip ended we were whisked away to the viewing platforms that run along the side of the glacier – here you can see where tunnels are formed every few years as well as appreciate the sheer size of the glacier from an elevated position. We had an hour to walk along the viewing platforms which weren’t particularly long but it was easy to become pre-occupies and mesmerised by a single section if you thought there was a chance it could come crashing down at any moment!
We got back to El Calafate
bus terminal with minutes to spare in order to catch our bus to El Chalten, after diverting the coach to a cash machine in order to repay our loan. 3 hours later we approached an impressive backdrop which was the mountain range above El Chalten. The bus continued to hostel del pioneers, so we stayed on not fancying the prospect of carrying our packs around town after a long day. The hostel appeared large and tidy with large lockers, but no breakfast and having to pay $2 for toilet roll turned us against it. That night we found a cute cabin style restaurant and had pizza while Richard sampled the local brew which tasted strong.
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Mark
non-member comment
Very impressive
if a bit chilly!